HTPC / Modifying GameEx

[Branden]

Please bare with me I am completely new to gameEx. I have a buddy that has it currently setup and running an arcade system in his basement and it looks like really good software.

My use though is strictly going to be for a HTPC software.

Question #1: What I want to be able to do is to modify the main start up menu. I want to eliminate everything having to do with Games

from the menu options. I want to be down to strictly audio / dvd options. Is this possible?

Question #2: I would like to setup GameEx in a Front end / Back end configuration. Where I would have multiple front end HTPC's all talking back to a main server that holds all of my movies / audio.

I did see something regarding a Game Extender, will this accomplish what I want to do? Can I multiple front end HTPC's using this?

Any help / guidance is greatly appreciated.

[Necromancyr]

If you're going purely HTPC, why wouldn't you use XBMC? Not a hit on GameEx, but XBMC was designed specifically with that as it's core focus whereas GameEx was designed with emu/games as it's core focus.

[Branden]

I have looked at XBMC as well as Media Browser. But I do want to setup an arcade sometime so I figured if i could do everything with one software why not. That way I only have one to learn / maintain even though they would be different systems.

[Adultery]

You can do the first using custom menus. Using that tool you can make the menu display anything you like in any order.

As for the second item, you want to house one installation and run it on several HTPCs? I mean I use my GameEx cab to serve my media all over my house but don't necessarily use GameEx on all systems. What you want to do is point GameEx at different folders on the network as opposed to just the ones installed in your system right? If that's the case, of course it can be done. As far as having one install to rule them all I don't know if that's possible... I can see some snags you'll hit along the way using that method.

And hey... Welcome to the forums!

[Branden]

thanks for the reply.

What I want to do is have a copy of GameEx installed on each of my HTPC's but point them all back to a centralized storage location. That way I won't have to have multiple copies of my movies around the house.

Is the custom menu tool built in to GameEx? I have started the initial configuration. Would I just select custom from the main screen? Is this what you are referring to?

[Adultery]

OK. As I stated, you can do this quite easily. I network some of my larger collections and have no problems doing this. I would maybe consider mapping a shared folder as a drive on your HTPC to boost throughput on your network. In other words, not only is this possible it's perfectly acceptable.

The custom menu tool is in the GameEx start menu install folder under "Utilities". It's a seperate app aside from the Setup Wizard. You specify the page title, and the list items for each. As an example:

On my start page I have three menus: Movies, Apps, and Music. Under movies I have Play DVD, Netflix, and the Videos folder. Under Apps I have Facebook, Weather, and RSS Feeds. Under Music I have Rhapsody, and GameEx's Jukebox. It's really quite simple to set it up this way.

[Necromancyr]

For a HTPC on a TV, I still highly recommend XBMC - it's more polished from the media perspective and has a huge support base to work from. Then just run GameEx on your arcade machine OR run it FROM XBMC to do emulator stuff. Just my recommendation.

Regarding the central location for medial, you're talking about a media server based approach which is what I have. I have a Windows Home Server acting as a file server that my different 'interfaces' all point to for media. Basically, either map your network drives to a drive letter on each computer that needs to access it and enter those paths into GameEx/whatever or directly enter the network paths (e.g., \\SERVER\MEDIA\) if the software accepts that.

[Adultery]

Basically, either map your network drives to a drive letter on each computer that needs to access it and enter those paths into GameEx/whatever or directly enter the network paths (e.g., \\SERVER\MEDIA\) if the software accepts that.

...which is pretty much what I just said.

[Draco1962]

If running Vista or Windows 7, you can also run Windows Media Center (which comes already installed - you just add a few plugins as needed and configure as you like) as GameEx will run fine as a plugin from it (which was part of its intended purpose for those with WMC machines).

[Necromancyr]

...which is pretty much what I just said.

Wait, I'm supposed to READ your posts? Crap.

[Branden]

thanks for the all the reply's. I will have to play around with it some and figure out what is going to work best for me. But this gives me a good place to start.

[Branden]

So I have been able to configure custom menus with out any issues. I really like how simple it is to modify the menus.

On my start page I have three menus: Movies, Apps, and Music. Under movies I have Play DVD, Netflix, and the Videos folder. Under Apps I have Facebook, Weather, and RSS Feeds. Under Music I have Rhapsody, and GameEx's Jukebox. It's really quite simple to set it up this way.

How are you able to get Netflix setup. I found this thread netflix setup

Is that the most commonly used method?

Again, A big thanks to everyone to helping me out.

[Adultery]

Actually I used to use their player but all the sudden GameEx decided it doesn't like MS Silverlight, so now I use Boxee in my movies menu instead to watch Netflix and my MP4 rips. I honestly don't use it too often though since I have a cab and not an HTPC.

I wish we could get Silverlight to work though, the video quality is way better on Netflix native player.

[headkaze]

I wish we could get Silverlight to work though, the video quality is way better on Netflix native player.

I wonder if this was due to Flash changing the way it's displayed in fullscreen. I had the same problem when Flash player was updated a while ago it's fullscreen display would not come to the foreground. When I adjusted to compensate for this it screwed up Siverlights ability to go fullscreen. The fix I had was to do the following...

IntPtr hWnd = Win32.FindWindow("ShockwaveFlashFullScreen", IntPtr.Zero);

if (hWnd != IntPtr.Zero)
	Win32.SetParent(hWnd, this.Handle);

What this does is force Flash's screen into my fullscreen window but also allows Silverlight to go fullscreen without messing with it.

Anyway I have no idea if this is what messed things up for Tom, but I thought I would post about it anyway.

[Adultery]

So is this something I can fix on my rig? Looks by the code block Tom needs to do it.